Premier League Preview 2019-20: Brighton
Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club
Credit: Brighton & Hove Albion
2018-19 Premier League Finish: 17th Place
2019-20 Premier League Prediction: 19th Place (Relegated)
Transfers In:
Leandro Trossard FW - Genk £18,000,000
Matthew Clarke DF - Portsmouth, Undisclosed
Transfers Out:
Bruno DF - Retired
Brighton are entering their third consecutive season in the Premier League. Their previous 2 finishes were 15th place and then 17th place last season. And in my opinion it’s likely going to be their last as I have them slotted in 19th place and that means relegation. Brighton are entering their first season in 5 yrs with a different coach. Chris Hughton has served as Brighton’s manager since 2014 and was the manager that saw them through promotion in the Championship to the Premier League. After back to back seasons of nearing relegation, Brighton management have decided to go a different way. Graham Potter was the man chosen to replace Hughton after his somewhat successful first season at Swansea. Coming off relegation themselves, Potter led the Swans to a 10th place finish and a FA Cup semifinal. It’s going to be interesting to see if Potter can turn this side around and get them a little bit more out of them on offense.
Strength:
Lewis Dunk
Credit: TalkSport
I’m not going to lie, finding a strength in this side is rather tough. I thought about going with Brighton’s defense as it’s not the worst in the world. But there is also a chance they lose Lewis Dunk, so that could get a lot worse. They had the 9th best defense 2 years ago and about the 13th best defense last year, but I’m going to go with something out of the ordinary for the biggest strength for Brighton. And that is their club’s willingness to spend money. Brighton had a net expenditure of around £67,000,000 in 2017/18 and around £75,000,000 in 2018/19. So far this season they’ve spent around £24,000,000. While it seems they’ve struck out on many of these additions, that’s not on the ownership’s ability to spend money, that’s on the scouts. So why is this important? Well come January, if Brighton find themselves at the bottom of the table, the club could very well try to spend their way out of relegation. It might work, it might not, but hey at least ownership is willing to give it a go.
Weakness:
Glenn Murray
Credit: BeSoccer
This weakness might be more obvious than Bournemouth’s defense, and that is Brighton’s attack. In two years, Brighton have scored 69 goals in 76 games played. There’s only been 1 team finish with less goals in one of those two seasons and not get relegated, that was Huddersfield Town in 2017/18. And guess what, they finished 20th place the following season and were relegated. Brighton’s leading scorer last year was Glenn Murray, who had 13 goals. Which hey, from Glenn Murray’s point of view, that’s damn impressive that he scored 13 goals at age 35. The next highest scorer on the team was Shane Duffy with 5 goals, who just so happens to be a defender. All of Brighton’s other attackers produced a whopping 5 goals total. Jurgen Locadia had 2 goals and Florin Andone had 3 goals. If I was a Brighton forward, I might would consider retirement, but then again why not get paid a couple million dollars to not have to show up every week or any week at all. Now it might sound like I’m being harsh on Brighton, but it’s actually just the harsh reality. You can’t rely on a soon to be 36 year old to lead this team in scoring year after year. Eventually somebody else is going to have to step up or they’re going to get relegated.
Top Goalscorer Predictions:
Glenn Murray: 8 goals
Leandro Trossard: 5 goals
Florin Andone: 4 goals
Home Kit: The Brighton home kit is okay. I think it would look a lot better if they would have kept the blue stripes just blue, instead of adding the black lines to it. I am a big fan of the gold nike symbol and stripe on the back. Looks good with the blue.
Away Kit: Probably the plainest jersey you’ll see all season. I’m sure it took Nike all of 10 seconds to create that jersey.
